February 18, 2008

Newsweek has a long article on the wonderfulness of Mrs. Obama, but she sounds like she's got a log-sized chip on her shoulder from lucking into Princeton due to affirmative action. For predictable reasons, being admitted into one of the Big Four super colleges and being given lots of financial aid didn't instill in her a feeling of gratitude toward the benevolence of white people. Instead, it just fed her adolescent self-consciousness and racial paranoia. The bad news is that she doesn't seem to have gotten over it yet. (She's 44).

She did well in school (she skipped second grade), but she was not at the top of her class. She didn't get the attention of the school's college counselors, who helped the brightest students find spots at prestigious universities. "Princeton, the Ivy Leagues swoop up kids" like [her brother] Craig, Michelle says. "A black kid from the South Side of Chicago that plays basketball and is smart. He was getting in everywhere. But I knew him, and I knew his study habits, and I was, like, 'I can do that too'." Some of her teachers told her she didn't have the grades or test scores to make it to the Ivies. But she applied to Princeton and was accepted.

Overwhelmingly white and privileged, Princeton was not an easy place for a young black woman from the inner city. There weren't formal racial barriers and black students weren't officially excluded. But many of the white students couldn't hide that they regarded their African- American classmates as affirmative-action recipients who didn't really deserve to be there.

Angela Acree, a close friend who attended Princeton with Michelle, says the university didn't help dispel that idea. Black and Hispanic students were invited to attend special classes a few weeks before the beginning of freshman semester, which the school said were intended to help kids who might need assistance adjusting to Princeton's campus. Acree couldn't see why. She had come from an East Coast prep school; Michelle had earned good grades in Chicago. "We weren't sure whether they thought we needed an extra start or they just said, 'Let's bring all the black kids together'."

Obviously, this program wasn't put together by the Princeton klavern of the Ku Klux Klan, it was planned by the Princeton diversity sensitivity outreach nook. One reason diversicrats want to bring all the black freshmen to campus before everybody else is so they'll bond to each other, not to random whites and Asians during the regular orientation week. During the first few days of a new phase of life, you are very emotionally open to bonding with the other people who are going through the experience with you. So, the diversicrats can build a constituency by holding special pre-orientations for blacks.

The three of them talked often about the racial divide on campus—especially how white students they knew from class would pass them on the green and pretend not to see them. "It was, like, here comes a black kid," says Acree. The black students tended to hang out together at the Third World Center, a social club on campus, while the white party scene revolved around Princeton's eating clubs.

Michelle felt the tension acutely enough that she made it the subject of her senior sociology thesis, titled "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community." The paper is now under lock and key, but according to the Chicago Sun-Times, Michelle wrote that Princeton "made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before." She wrote that she felt like a visitor on the supposedly open-minded campus. "Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton," she wrote, "it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second." (Today, Michelle says, not quite convincingly, that she can't remember what was in her thesis.)

If she'd gone to, say, the University of Illinois or wherever she would have gotten in without affirmative action, she wouldn't have spent four years knowing that she was below the student body average in intelligence; she wouldn't have spent four years worrying that everybody else was noticing she wasn't as smart as the average; and she wouldn't have spend four years, plus the next 22, hating them for noticing it.

59 comments:

If she'd gone to, say, the University of Illinois or wherever she would have gotten in without affirmative action, she wouldn't have spent four years knowing that she was below the student body average in intelligence; she wouldn't have spent four years worrying that everybody else was noticing she wasn't as smart as the average; and she wouldn't have spend four years, plus the next 22, hating them for noticing it.

...and she wouldn't right now be the next first lady-in waiting.

The Obamas were among those blacks chosen early for high purposes.

And being made to feel that their success was unearned? Isn't that what blacks say about whites all the time? Can I pout about that, too, and claim to be oppressed?

Team Barry needs to get a handle on this woman, to which demo does this bitter carping play positively? And why did Barry choose such an openly angry woman as his wife? Doesn't quite mesh with his feelgood "we are the change we seek" politico-narcissism (God help us ten years ago that motto would have been regarded as a vicious send-up of self-regarding baby boomers).

My guess is they kind of complement each other: he's the sunny, easygoing one and she's the pushy "strong" one who keeps him in line. Plus, she gives him street cred, being from a genuine African-American background on the South Side of Chicago, as opposed to his mixed and decidedly un-black background.

Maybe he has a thing for Amazons: I think she's about six feet tall and I've heard him describe her as "spectacular". IMO she's not bad looking, especially for 44, but that pouty, childish/angry expression is a turn-off.

Steve's comments bring to mind the devastating essay of several years ago by that champion of clear headed thinking, Heather McDonald, in City Journal written about the Harvard diversicrats who grabbed even more power at Harvard just before Summers exited. Read and weap - http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=1811

In my years working in finance, I got to know a corporate counsel for a major American corporation (now defunct) and he told me just one of his affirmative action horror stories. He was hiring a new associate counsel for his corporation, and was told that of the finalists he was to hire the black female. Once hired, he told me this woman didn’t do any work in three plus years of employment, at the end of which she moved on to an ever better job. In fact, he told me that what she spent most of her time doing was writing nasty letters to the local newspapers accusing their star writers of “racism.” She used the company stationary and fax machine for these missives.

I wouldn’t doubt that Mrs. Obama’s anger is in part caused by her own “denial” over her lack of ability in comparison to the extraordinary privileges afforded to her.

I don't understand why blacks are not more radical. If there is one place on Earth that is paradise for blacks, it's the university. It has become hysterical in its fight against all forms of anti-black racism--real or imaginary-- yet all blacks can see in this wonderland is bigotry. If Princeton is the KKK in suits, then what must be lurking in the heart of ordinary whites? You'd think blacks would be taking up arms against their demon oppressors. Is all their bitchin' just a pose, or are they simply incapable of any sense in this area?

"Black and Hispanic students were invited to attend special classes a few weeks before the beginning of freshman semester...""One reason diversicrats want to bring all the black freshmen to campus before everybody else is so they'll bond to each other, not to random whites and Asians during the regular orientation week."

They did this type of thing at my undergrad too. Us "multicultural" students had a separate advising office. They just assume our culture is different because we're part of a minority group. What ever happened to assimilation? Luckily, we were only required to go there once. It was funny running into one of the Cubans guys in my fraternity there. He looked like his ancestors were the Visigothic invaders of Iberia rather than the mulatto supporters of Castro. I am happy to say that they got rid of segregated advising by the time I graduated.

"The three of them talked often about the racial divide on campus—especially how white students they knew from class would pass them on the green and pretend not to see them."

There is another way of looking at whole Ralph Ellison "Invisible Man" syndrome. It seems to me that many blacks have an *extra* need to be "recognized" beyond what whites and Asians expect from each other. It's a cultural difference that gets misinterpreted on both sides.

There is a African-American run restaurant that recently opened. When the black staff are at the cash register or whatever, I have noticed they try to force this whole dialogue that is less about "Hi. May I take your order" and more about "You have to recognize ME and then I might take your order."

They just have a different sense of what is appropriate in public space with strangers or semi-strangers. If you want to make a theory, it is probably because they are far less cerebral than whites or Asians and are more socially open and engaged at all times.

Americans are used to talking about race in terms of what whites do that is wrong or unjust. And blacks are very quick to be very vocal about "wierd white people" or "racist white people," and whites are nice (or naive) enough to take these statements seriously. But the reality is blacks have some major quirks of their own that cause awkward situations with non-blacks. Maybe with Latinos in the mix, that will become more apparent.

My guess is they kind of complement each other: he's the sunny, easygoing one and she's the pushy "strong" one who keeps him in line."

Gee, that pairing sounds strangely familiar. Where have we seen a democratic power-couple like that before?

The Clinton campaign would do well to shine a kleeg-light on Michelle Obama. She is speaking on behalf of her husband, and one can reasonably assume that she speaks for her husband, so what she says is fair game. She recently said, while stumping in Wisconsin, that just recently, during Obama's campaign, was the first time she was proud of her country. The first time? Shouldn't there be a slightly higher standard, patriotism-wise, for a President?

From the article, this gem of self-regard: "...especially how white students they knew from class would pass them on the green and pretend not to see them. "It was, like, here comes a black kid,"

"Know from class" is not the same thing as "Know". I routinely recognized other white people from my classes (some of which might have 50-100 people in them) and routinely walked by them without acknowledging them, and they did the same to me. Why? Because all we had in common is that we were in the same class - because we shared no more common bond than had we just been riding the bus together.

I asked my Mom--who is as good an example of apolitical middle America as I can think of--what she thought of Michelle Obama, who was recently on Oprah. She said she came across as bright, real, and well spoken. All the talk about "hidden discrimination" can be read by an audience of females as normal female worrying about status. It need not be angry. I'm not sure everyone is picking up on the anger, not least because we live in a society where people say, "Someday, I"m going to kill you and your family" with a smile on their face, and we applaud ourselves for smiling back as a sign of our virtue.

"'[Michelle] recognized that she had been privileged by affirmative action and she was very comfortable with that,' [Havard Law pal] Williams recalls.

Michelle recalls things differently. A campaign spokeswoman says she had an edge getting into Princeton not because of affirmative action, but because her older brother was there as a scholar athlete. She was a 'legacy,' just like any other applicant with family ties to Princeton. Her aides say Michelle earned her way into Harvard on merit by distinguishing herself at Princeton."

Newsweek kindly pitches this as either/or. But it's more likely a case of and/plus.

So, if Michelle is the type to nurse grudges, she's got two to mull.

There's the shadow cast by her overachieving scholar/athlete older brother (who, judging from his career trajectory, is good with numbers and with people).

Cut her some slack. Miss Michelle Robinson also had a very tough major/minor combo at WhiteRpeopleton University: Sociology (like her brother) AND African-American Studies. No wonder she got into Harvard Law School. I also note that like her big brother (MBA -UChicago) she doesn't work in the field of her professional degree. Couldn't be that Affirm Act becomes too costly in the real world? Nah.

***OFF TOPIC ALERT***As an aside I really dig how Princeton grants A.B. begrees instead of the good ole B.A. How WHITERPEOPLE is that!

My sister in law is black and went to an Ivy followed by Med school. She really was smarter not just than the norm but smarter than almost all of her white classmates. She did come out with any heightened racial animosity, despite experiencing what I believe is some discrimination that held her back somewhat (although she is still quite successful). She is quiet and doesn't push herself forward, so she tended to fade into the woodwork compared to less talented but much pushier NYC guys, who actually stole credit for her work at times. I don't think the affirmative action stuff helped her -- there were some assumptions made by the white guys around her that were hard to reverse, especially since she is not the type to point out that e.g. she outscored the great majority of the white males around her on academic qualifications.

"If she'd gone to, say, the University of Illinois or wherever she would have gotten in without affirmative action, she wouldn't have spent four years knowing that she was below the student body average in intelligence; she wouldn't have spent four years worrying that everybody else was noticing she wasn't as smart as the average; and she wouldn't have spend four years, plus the next 22, hating them for noticing it."

Another Trojan Horse argument here. One cannot (in good conscience) speak of Ivy league affirmative action to blacks without speaking of the far more prevalent Ivy League Affirmative action to white(er)s.

Steve Sailer:If she'd gone to, say, the University of Illinois or wherever she would have gotten in without affirmative action, she wouldn't have spent four years knowing that she was below the student body average in intelligence; she wouldn't have spent four years worrying that everybody else was noticing she wasn't as smart as the average; and she wouldn't have spend four years, plus the next 22, hating them for noticing it.

I don't follow school rankings much anymore [and after the Reagan tax cuts kick-started the economy again, most of the state schools have really fallen by the wayside*], but, back in the early 1980's, Urbana-Champaign was a darned good school.

Of course, within any school, there's going to be a huge variation in intelligence between the guys in the hard majors [math, physics, chemistry, EE, etc], and everybody else [like the sociology & Afro-whatever majors - no offense to any of you who might lurk at iSteve], but I'd imagine that, in the early 1980's, Michelle would have been down around the bottom of a hypothetical Urbana-Champaign class, as well.

*PS: Status-post the Reagan boom [now going into roughly its 26th year, since 1982], the state schools have fallen almost completely off the radar.

Back in the 1970's & 1980's, there were some really outstanding state schools [Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Urbana-Champaign, Madison, Chapel Hill, Charlottesville, etc], but with the explosion in wealth since the Reagan policies went into effect, the private schools have left them in the dust.

PPS: One other thought. If both Barack & Michelle really are the beneficiaries of AA, and, throughout their lives, have received academic appointments and job placements which they didn't deserve, then, bottom line would be that they just aren't all that smart.

For instance, a Hillary Rodham, with legitimate degrees from Wellesley & Yale Law, would be much more intelligent than a Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, with illegitimate degrees from Princeton & Harvard Law [of course, I'm assuming that Hillary wasn't a quota admission herself]. Dittoes with Bill -vs- Barack.

Which would mean that, long term, once the nirvana wears off, and people realize that the emperor has no clothes, the Obamas would be much easier opponents to beat [assuming, of course, that the nirvana wears off before November 4, 2008.]

The lefties over at Counterpunch seem a little skeptical about Obama: http://www.counterpunch.org/Obama's Money Cartel

Pam Martens exposes the slimy underside of the campaign for "hope" and "change". Obama says lobbyists "haven't funded my campaign". A lie, Martens writes in this explosive issue of CounterPunch. Five top contributors to Obama are registered lobbyists and he fronts for the most vicious players on Wall Street. Read how he helped pass the law for which Big Business had been scheming for a decade.

You really don't seem to understand that on this blog, goofy sound-bite statements are not greeted with a round of amens. One more time "truth". What PERCENTAGE of whites are "affirmative action" and what PERCENTAGE of blacks (among the black students in Ivy schools) are affirmative action.

truth, you left out one important detail, that discrimination against whites and asians is still going strong. Discrimination against jews in schools ended long, long ago. One can "in good conscience" talk of wrongs going on today without incessantly mentioning past wrongs that have long been rectified.

"back in the early 1980's, Urbana-Champaign was a darned good school...

A guy who's written four posts arguing that American citizens are not eligible to run for president is questioning yet another esteemed professional's intelligence. I swear I couldn't make this stuff up!

"You really don't seem to understand that on this blog, goofy sound-bite statements are not greeted with a round of amens"

Well, maybe they should be. Pro white (anti-jewish) affirmative action decreased the number of Ivy league jews in the 50's and 60's in half. from roughly 40% to 20%. The beneficiaries of this were PRACTICALLY ALL white(er) people. Has there ever been an Ivy league school over 8% black?

Hey, I have an idea, Lucius Vorenas is a genius, maybe he can help you with the math! (lol)

It seems to me that many blacks have an *extra* need to be "recognized" beyond what whites and Asians expect from each other. It's a cultural difference that gets misinterpreted on both sides.

There is a African-American run restaurant that recently opened. When the black staff are at the cash register or whatever, I have noticed they try to force this whole dialogue that is less about "Hi. May I take your order" and more about "You have to recognize ME and then I might take your order."

They just have a different sense of what is appropriate in public space with strangers or semi-strangers.

Interesting subcultural difference, and it's easy to see how misinterpretaions could appear.

If you want to make a theory, it is probably because they are far less cerebral than whites or Asians and are more socially open and engaged at all times.

I think this is unnecessarily speculative. I've had direct experience with how Japanese and Korean resterauteurs greet customers in their respective countries, and the difference in culture is much huger than the genetic difference between the two groups.

Which brings us around to another issue discussed here in the past - the unsurprising friction between African-Americans and Korean-Americans. I'm sure there are worse pairings of incompatible cultures to be found on Earth, but I can't think of any.

Everyone in America who has encountered an "Angry Black Woman" will immediately impute that image onto Michelle Obama.

Oh I dunno, in my experience black women are more tolerable than black men, which probably has a lot to do with why they're so much more employable.

Just adding another data point.

She typifies the blacks getting screwed by AA.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Another Trojan Horse argument here. One cannot (in good conscience) speak of Ivy league affirmative action to blacks without speaking of the far more prevalent Ivy League Affirmative action to white(er)s.

Is this another of your non sequiturs, or do you have a point?

Well, maybe they should be. Pro white (anti-jewish) affirmative action decreased the number of Ivy league jews in the 50's and 60's in half. from roughly 40% to 20%. The beneficiaries of this were PRACTICALLY ALL white(er) people. Has there ever been an Ivy league school over 8% black?

Stiiiill not seeing the point!

Interesting subcultural difference, and it's easy to see how misinterpretaions could appear.

These two deserve each other! You cant help but notice how nasty she seems to Obama. I saw them on Oprah (sorry! Dont worry-- I am NOT a regular viewer!)She seemed cold and hostile...to Barry.(let alone White America) I thought,as I have thought everytime I see her or Obama discussess her,"That broad--whatever she is thinking---she does NOT love that man!!" Uhm,as another poster wrote,that does seem to recall another "power couple"...WAIT!!NO!! NO!! NOOOOO! You dont think--it couldnt be!! Michelle Obama,2016--the Inevitable Candidate!!! I am moving to Kosovo!! -Josh

But the reality is blacks have some major quirks of their own that cause awkward situations with non-blacks. Maybe with Latinos in the mix, that will become more apparent.__

I'm black but I've felt very awkward sometimes with native north american blacks. One time i was in NYC , and i notice this black nerdish looking guy ( big glasses ) riding a weird , complex looking modified bicycle. I notice the brother and i grin slightly , happy to see a black guy who's probably a smart engineering student . The dude notices me and right away says something like " you see, our people can do that stuff too man. Black people can do that shit just as good as white people " . I suddenly didn't feel too much like talking to the guy. It's not that i don't care at all about racial stuff, but i'm first of all a nerd who cares much about science/tech topics . That's what i'd have loved to chat about .

From the article truth linked: "I'm skeptical of the finding that white students would not also be helped by a policy that gets rid of discrimination," Clegg said. "Our studies have shown that white students are hindered by politically correct admissions policies."

Ditto what Clegg said. It's funny that while the article gives a vague generality to the effect that the end of AA has reduced white, black, and Latino admissions, it only gives numbers on the latter groups. My guess is that the numbers for white just weren't all the impressive.

In any case, I'd like to breathe word of thanks to Asian-Americans for their continued academic excellence, and to California for having so many of them. Without Asian-Americans on the West coast, the main people hurt by affirmative action would be whites (yes, Jews are included with whites nowadays, which means AA continues to hurt them as it has all along). That would mean even less attention paid to AA by the self-loathing white media.

This Brown article shows that skin color Affirmative Action primarily screws Asian Americans. A recent Princeton study showed that Asian Americans would earn 80% of the slots reserved for AA admits if merit alone was used and increase acceptance rates 18->23%. Whites would only capture 20% of the slots and increase their acceptance rate 0.5% due their larger numbers.

Your criticism on affirmative action for legacy (and athletes for that matter) admits is (are) independent issues. One injustice does not justify another. Besides, I suspect that Blacks benefit disproportionally from athletic scholarships in terms of standards bending if not sheer numbers in the majority of colleges and universities.

Here's the abstract to the Colburn study. The study's abstract implies that AA is close to a wash for whites, citing the assertion that "White applicants would benefit very little by removing racial and ethnic preferences; the White acceptance rate would increase by roughly 0.5 percentage points," and implying its results were in agreement.

On the other hand, outside of the peer-reviewed world, the mainstream media (articles by Peter Schmidt and Patrick Corey) assert vaguely that white enrollments have declined (Schmidt qualified that with a "slightly", but neither quantified it at all). Unfortunately, my computer is sitting on its hands so I can't view/download the PDF from the Repositories site.

My guess, again, is that the decline in white enrollment is very small - small enough that the social scientists know to ignore it (while the MSM feels like it needs to be run up a flagpole ... I just can't imagine why).

yes, Jews are included with whites nowadays, which means AA continues to hurt them as it has all along

Hmm, might want to ask La Griffe du Lion about that. According to his work Jews are at worst (from a Jewish P.O.V.) represented as one would expect given no AA (i.e., AA doesn't impact them much one way or another) at a big Ivy (Harvard I think).

Yes you are right about Asians that would have benefited had lower scoring blacks and latinos not been admitted, but Asians also outscore whites on standardized tests and the minute AA was outlawed their numbers skyrocketed over and above the numbers of blacks/latinos who no longer qualified. What does that tell you?

And legacy is not a totally unrelated topic if you follow the logic; at one point blacks were not admitted into the schools, therefore they were denied the opportunities of whites to develop "legacies". Therefore those slots are not open in the current day. As far as athletics go, black college athletes are over-represented in exactly two sports; basketball and football, which happen to be the only two college sports that consistently produce revenue.

"Back in the 1970's & 1980's, there were some really outstanding state schools [Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Urbana-Champaign, Madison, Chapel Hill, Charlottesville, etc], but with the explosion in wealth since the Reagan policies went into effect, the private schools have left them in the dust."

Nonsense. Check the rankings for various subjects. Particularly for science and engineering, the top-tier state schools often out-perform the Ivies and other fancy private schools. Of America's two best cancer research centers, one of them (M.D. Anderson) is part of the University of Texas system.

Cornell is the Shemp of the Ivies, and part of it is a state land-grant school (nothing wrong with that -- I went to one -- but nothing particularly exclusive about it either). It's a decent research institution though, on par with some of the great state universities. Stanford, though non-Ivy, is far more prestigious. So are its professional schools. So is non-Ivy MIT, but that's a more specialized school obviously.

truth:A guy who's written four posts arguing that American citizens are not eligible to run for president is questioning yet another esteemed professional's intelligence. I swear I couldn't make this stuff up!

Dude, what can I say?

Steve Sailer already censors about half of the things I try to post here [you only see the tamer half of them].

Hey - if there are any Nubian Princesses who frequent iSteve, then be assured that: I Is Yo' Man.

Dittoes for Japs [Jewish American Princesses] and Aaps [Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Asian-American Princesses].

Or any other chicks, for that matter.

I am very much a non-discriminatory paleo-phallo-centric-misogynistic bigot.

My money's on a gentic difference, more than a cultural one.I have presonally ridden a boat from Nagasaki to Pusan and observed the very different behaviors of the geneticaly very similar Mongol/Han people at either end of the trip. Culture can be very powerful.

It's not that i don't care at all about racial stuff, but i'm first of all a nerd who cares much about science/tech topics. That's what i'd have loved to chat about."

Ditto on the international nerd brotherhood. :-) One of the smartest guys I knew growing up was a Ghanian guy, couldn't be more black racially but was a science minded guy and pariah with African American kids.

Hey, even Condoleeza Rice is a big nerd. She studied and taught Poly Sci with a focus on the Soviets and speaks several languages. If she is on the Republican ticket as VP, I might take another look at McCain.

truth, tell the whole truth or nothing but the truth, because half and quarter truths are not truth. It's too bad that white gentiles who estabished the universities in the first place, should have given themselves priority, but you see, that's what people do. Or what people used to do--that which we create for our own needs, serve our own needs first. The early Universities were even started by clergy--why should they have been primed to discriminate against the people who started and ran them? Of course times and demographics change--not that there's anything wrong with that. But what were the SATs, grades, and IQs of the gentile whites compared with the Jewish candidates of the 1950s? Now. What is the difference between the SATS, grade and IQs of affirmative action black candidates for Ivy League compared with whites and Asians today? When people demand entrance to "club" started by a perceived "enemy", which is how many blacks appear to view whites, do they really have right to come in and demand this rather "intellectually elite" and singular type of white should immediately adopt black standards of behavior and mentality? Really intelligent blacks who really belong in Universities rarely have bad attitudes because they are too involved in their work and competing justly with their colleagues. I worked in a major university history department where one of the best (perhaps the best) professors was a friendly, unpretentious, very smart black guy who turned up as a commentator on the Civil War series. So it happens. But he didn't need AA. As for the prospect of MO running for president herself, the last 8 years have so lowered any standards for the presidency, that she's as good as anybody. The office has little meaning anymore--the people running things are behind the scenes. Any silly puppet who gets media/corporate support has a chance as long as they get press. Any worthwhile candidate has no chance if he/she gets no press.

Let's be clear: the harm of affirmative action is not necessarily the harm to the marginal white applicant who would get in but for affirmative action.

The harm of affirmative action is two fold. First, affirmative action leads inexorably to the decline of standards. Everyone notices the difference of ability once 1SD lower IQ blacks and minorities are in a place like Harvard or Berkeley. So pretty soon standards must slip so everyone can be equally "smart" based on the new, lower standards across-the-board. (We've seen this in fire departments and police departments once women were let in.) With lower standards, the underqualified admitees don't feel so bad and stand out so much. Second, affirmative action sets up a demented idea: the institutions are just only so long as they are "representative." It spreads out from school into more important things like the military, engineering, science, the astronaut corps, airlines piloting, heart surgery, etc.

It's one thing if a bunch of blacks take up space like Michelle Obama did at Princeton, writing narcissistic essays in easy majors like sociology. It's quite another when they're cutting open your chest.

I went to great schools. Affirmative action didn't hurt me directly. But it has hurt those schools and it has hurt society by making equality more important than excellence and by hurting standards that were once used quite effectively to choose between which whites were excellent applicants and which ones should be denied.

How could such standards be racist? The only "racist" here is God, who gave the different races different average IQs. It's a bit sad, but thanks to standardized testing no qualified black or minority needs to worry about being seen as less capable, so long as we get rid of affirmative action and let the chips fall where they may. Once we quit worrying about group outcomes, we can know every high IQ black is getting as far as his IQ and work ethic will allow.

yes, Jews are included with whites nowadays, which means AA continues to hurt them as it has all along

Hmm, might want to ask La Griffe du Lion about that. According to his work Jews are at worst (from a Jewish P.O.V.) represented as one would expect given no AA (i.e., AA doesn't impact them much one way or another) at Harvard.

Jews are heavily overrepresented and in a cake-and-eat-it-too situation in light of strategic crypsis and quotas-but-not (i.e., institute across the board quotas and Jews lose huge, NE Asians lose huge, whites win big (increasing as one nears Harvard), blacks win huge, hispanics win huge, etc.) and their traditional patronage of AA for blacks.

I got a little bit of a different message out of those articles, svigor. Looks to me like Jews are almost as against (or unfavorable towards) AA as (gentile) whites are, even though AA hurts them only a little. Sure, most of them are smart enough that they can slip through in big numbers, so it doesn't hurt them too much, though if I were in the 3.8% I think I'd probably be annoyed.

I'd like someone to look at this math and see if I'm making any sense here. First, let me switch from percentages back to students, using the 1558 figure provided by illustrious lion claw as an estimated freshman class size.

La Griffe is estimating 435 qualified Jewish applicants (i.e. those who'd get admitted in a meritocracy), of whom 375 actually got admitted; thus 13.6% of the qualified Jews got excluded by the diversicrats.

Non-Jewish, non-Hispanic whites provided 851 meritocracy qualifiers, 706 of whom the diversicrats deigned to let in in spite of their inauspicious "double-non-" status. This is a rejection rate of 17%.

(Asians had an intermediate rejection rate of 14.1%, which corresponds to their IQ averages usually landing between Ashkenazis and white gentiles. The rates for African Americans and Hispanics were -11,328% and -1900%, respectively, though the meaning of the latter numbers is admittedly pretty abstract.)

What I'm saying is, maybe the reason the numbers of Jews getting turned away seems small is just the modest size of their population, combined with the fact that they have the highest average IQs. (Granted, the Unz/Buchanan estimates use different figures, but they were vague and apply mainly to Harvard; the calculated numbers supplied by La Griffe strike as having more relevance to the general question of rayffirmative praction or whatever they're calling it these days.)

I guess I should've read the link I posted (in "support" of my assertion about Jewish support for AA), rather than barely scanning it, hehe. I scanned it more closely after I submitted the post. I haven't even read the smackdowns I'll probably (rightly) get over it yet.

In my defense though, it's worth pointing out that Jews have one of their famous historical biases, in this case strongly against AA, and they still only come out indistinguishable from whites in the polls cited.

It just occurred to me that it might also be worth pointing out the fact that Jews polled in support of AA at the same rate whites did, but it doesn't affect Jews, greatly affects whites, and on the other hand, as I stated above, honest quotas would devastate Jews and help whites.

I have presonally ridden a boat from Nagasaki to Pusan and observed the very different behaviors of the geneticaly very similar Mongol/Han people at either end of the trip. Culture can be very powerful.

We're talking about two groups raised in pretty similar circumstances; not even a national border separating them.

It's interesting to read all these theories about the reasons for Michele Obama's comments regarding Princeton, posted by (I'm guessing) people who did not attend Princeton and therefore have no firsthand knowledge of what she may have experienced.

I, on the other hand, was there. I am white. I am a Republican. I went to Princeton and graduated in 1985. And I can tell you that all of the comments quoted are 100% justified. If anything they are an understatement of the reality, which was a pervasive attitude of "us and them" by whites toward non-whites, which manifested itself daily in marginalization, segregation, and discrimination.

I was a participant in that reality. Not because I am an evil racist, but just because I went along with the crowd. Everybody (white) was doing it.

If non-white students at Princeton in the 80's had a tendency to "band together", they did so in self-defense.

That woman is an ingrate, I think. I mean, she got into a school she wouldn't have gotten into were it not for the color of her skin. And her prestigious, Ivy league diploma, allowed her to get a very high paying job. Today, that woman is a millionaire (and the First Lady of the U.S.). That's a lot, considering what little potential Michelle really had, in my opinion.

What other country than America would have given HER opportunities like that? Still, for some reason, Michelle is full of resentment...

MO doesnt have a chip on her shoulder. She worked her *ss of 2 get her princeton degree & harvard law degree. U all post whatever disparragint things u want. But if we give you all the same assignments Michelle had 2 do for her princeton degree & the same assignments Michelle had 2 do 4 her harvard law degree, you would all fail.

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